Day trip to Nara: Land of deer

With a new addition to the Arkansas group, we planned to meet Tristan the next day for an adventure to Nara.

The next morning, we awoke, organized, booked most of the rest of the trip through Southeast Asia, and transported our luggage to the Hilton where we would be staying for the rest of our time in Kyoto.

A bit after noon, we met Tristan at Kyoto Station, bought tickets to Nara, stocked up on food and beer and hopped the train. Against all custom, we ate on the train and drank some beers in plastic bags.

Arriving in Nara, we made our way to the tourism office, received maps from a multilingual guide and walked through town to the park. The town’s mascot is a Buddha with deer antlers. As we meandered through the ancient capitol of Japan, past the second-tallest pagoda, the number of deer we passed confirmed the reason for this – not shy at all, the deer roam everywhere and have become accustom to receiving food from visitors.

[PHOTO OF DEER]

Nara was quite simple – we visited the “big Buddha,” saw more deer, ate kakigori and returned to the station to try to get back to Kyoto in time to meet Zach and Emily. The train we caught was the slow town, but it was enjoyable for the first 15 minutes as we entered a car with what seemed like 3 baseball teams – all from the same junior high school outside of Kyoto – who were enthralled with speaking with Erin. After they left, the train got slower and at the first opportunity we switched over to the express, got back to Kyoto Station and got a cab back to the hotel.

[PHOTO OF BUDDHA]

Back in the room, we saw that Zach and Emily had already arrived but were nowhere to be found. I went down looking for them, and they had ventured out to try to meet Dean and Loryn, who had just returned from Kyosan. In the lobby, we converged and all piled into the room.

[PHOTO OF PURICULA]

After greetings, we split off and Zach, Haynes, Emily, Erin and I joined Tristan for dinner – we ventured near the tiny stream and entered an izikaya, where we got all you can eat and drink for 2 hours for $35 a person. There we ate and drank – fortunately I had drank the hangover cure drink made from some root and served chilled in a golden aluminum container – and ate and drank some more. After, we hit up the pircula booth and tried semi-successfully to squeeze all six of us into one machine. After Emily and Zach’s first go at decorating, we hailed a cab and made it back in time to only barely wake Dean and Loryn.